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Go Ahead, Try To Kick Me

This weekend it was time for some BC dungeon pugs with my disc priest and Reversion’s warrior. Thursday afternoon I had run around and gotten us attuned for Old Hillsbrad so we tried queuing specifically for that and got a party right away, to our pleasant surprise. There was a paladin, a hunter, and a shadow priest. Reversion and I hopped on the dragon, the shadow priest right behind us, and took off. As we start in on the first guards at the gate the hunter says “We can’t make the dragon work”. So we tell them to get a new pack of bombs first and they make their way to us. I glance at the paladin and hunter – same server, different guilds, but I was betting they were friends or relatives in RL. Sometimes you can get that vibe.

We start clearing stuff, I ask the shadow priest for some tips on a face-melt rotation (thanks! It worked, I killed quest mobs most painfully) and then I notice something odd. When we’re fighting, Reversion is the only one in melee. The hunter and priest are staying back, as they should, but so is the paladin. And he’s… casting… Exorcism?

Yes, we had just encountered the melee hunter’s opposite number; the ranged Ret pally.

I let it slide. He’d occasionally run in and consecrate, and he seemed a bit awkward at the game. When we made it to the keep to get Thrall, he could not find the basement and the hunter reminded us that he wasn’t there yet before starting the escort phase; I was more convinced than ever that they were a dad and kid, or something similar. The paladin said nothing the whole run. His exorcisms hit pretty hard, actually, and things died well. So it didn’t matter.

Next there was an Auchenai Crypts run, not notable except that we got three hunters as our dps. It’s bad enough trying to convince one hunter that his pet is growling; trying to track down and identify which two out of three are doing it, especially when two are white corehounds, is just not fun.

That was Friday; Saturday morning we queued up and got Steam Vaults. I was thrilled; I’ve been in there perhaps twice before. It’s great fun running instances you don’t really know. We got a mage, a DK, and a hunter. We fought our way to the gnome mekgineer boss – then were stumped. Where was the other boss we had to kill? We backtracked and started clearing. Suddenly the mage said “I was right we just need a key” and takes off for the other side of the instance where the locked door is that the final boss is waiting behind. We ignore him since Reversion has already said he’s pretty sure we need to kill the boss over up the ramp from where we are.

“Guys I gtg” the DK says suddenly, and leaves. The mage follows suit without a word, and we queue for dps. We finish clearing trash and we’re still waiting, having found the naga lady boss and her elemental pets.

After six or so minutes in the queue we agree we have nothing to lose by trying, so we start in three man and wipe. No problem; I identify two things I did wrong, we note boss mechanics and discuss strategy as we run back. Reversion is explaining to the hunter how he wants to have the hunter use Distracting Shot and freeze trap one of the adds on one side of the room. As we’re plotting strategy we get just a tiny bit too close to the boss – oops. The hunter goes down fast, Reversion and I try until I get silenced, and we wipe again.

Back again, and we’re ready to try. Reversion charges in. The hunter pulls out an add, but it resists the trap. Reversion taunts it back, and then the hunter pulls it out again. They ping pong it for a few rounds as they’re dpsing down the other add. For an ad-hoc strategy it works great. They kill the first add then focus on the second one. I’m healing away – she keeps silencing me so I have to play catch up rather than dps – and then suddenly I notice my combat text: “Berrysnatcher has died”.

Berrysnatcher? Is that the hunter’s pet? Nope! In the middle of the fight we’d received our two new dps friends, a rogue and a shaman, who commendably had run straight into the fight and gotten creamed. Vuhdo, like most raid frame addons, can’t update during combat and I had not even noticed the two new guys were here before they died.

We took the boss down, I rezzed and apologized to the new folks, and we ran to the end boss and killed him down fast. It was great fun – I love strategizing kills rather than just brute forcing them.

And then after lunch and some baby play time (Nomster dinged one yesterday and I guess she’s not really a baby any more!) we queue again and get Sethikk Halls. Ah, yes…

So we get a hunter, a mage, and a dk. The mage is very “go-go-go” but I’m having mana problems so Reversion takes things at my speed. The hunter has to be told twice to take his pet off growl. He’s not very good and he keeps a constant stream of banter going that tells us he’s probably about 12. In fact, after some particularly inane comments, I ask him if he’s twelve and he eventually after some “lol” and “guess” says he’s 11. Well, we’re warned.

We get all the way to the end and on the final boss wipe; I got polymorphed and couldn’t get around the pillar in time to avoid the arcane explosion. The mage says something rude and drops group; the rest of us run back and a nice shaman joins us halfway through. “Oh, that boss,” she says when we explain what happened. “Ugh. But why drop now?” Exactly my thought. I share the instance quests with her even though she can’t complete them since we’ve killed a boss she needs, but now she’s got them, and she thanks me. We drop the boss. The hunter dies; I don’t think he understands the need to hide behind the pillars even though we told him so. Reversion’s been whispering with the shaman, who wants to know if we’ll re-queue with her once the others drop. We agree and wait. The dk drops – and the hunter starts popping up the “requeue” screen. We decline and decline and decline. “Come on pick a role” he says. “You’re not very good at taking hints are you?” I ask. Finally, since we’re not getting rid of him, we take the queue.

Of course the last slot is a dk. He sets out immediately proving that he is less mature than the hunter; death gripping mobs to himself, being a jerk in chat, and finally bragging “Wow! I’m getting 1k death strikes!” which makes us all notice that his damage is, in fact, abyssmal. We point this out – he’s doing 125 dps. The idiot hunter is managing close to 500 – and he gets abusive, so we kick him.

His replacement is a paladin. A paladin who apparently thinks he is the tank. “Go go go” he says. I explain again that Reversion is catering to my mana. He doesn’t think much of this. He keeps over-pulling, grabbing other groups – and finally he runs into a room, aggros everything, I am sitting and drinking and we just decide to let him die. We end up wiping since he pulled three groups and didn’t kill anything before he died and on the way back from the graveyard he starts giving me crap about “you need to say something if you’re afk”.

I explain that I was not afk, I just wasn’t putting up with that sort of behavior, and he tries to vote kick me. Reversion laughs at him and says “good luck with that, since I’m married to her, no way”. Apparently he tried again several times and then he tried to kick Reversion, with the same luck.

Unfortunately since we kicked the dk, we cannot kick this idiot, so I tell the shaman not to heal when he does his nonsense. Sure enough when we get back he tries it again. We ignore him, Reversion tanks the mobs he was planning to pull, I heal people who aren’t the paladin, the paladin dies, we clean up, and we leave him lying dead on the floor and head in to kill the boss.

The guy didn’t bother releasing. Why do that when you can pile invective on peoples’ heads? I guess low level instances are srs bznz and that my job as the healer is to heal people regardless of whether they are doing their job or trying to get me killed. Also I guess things like “doing what the tank says” or “paying attention to healer mana” are overrated.

Anyway, great weekend. I learned a valuable lesson about the difference between jerkwad behavior and “I’m 11″ behavior. I’ll put up with 11 year olds but people who are just annoying and mean get to suffer.

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15 Responses

I was doing a daily random on my Tree, Shinano, the other week and we zoned into the Oculus. Immediately the Hunter starts begging us to kick him, this was shortly after the dungeon deserter debuff went up to 30 minutes from 15. We refused, there was much comment along the lines of “Either man up and take your own deserter debuff or shut up and play”. Unsurprisngly, the Hunter proceeded to sit put at the entrance and do nothing but hurl abuse at us in partychat.

There was no way we were giving him an easy out at this stage. At first he probably believed we would just kick him if he got abusive enough, but it just wasn’t going to happen. By the time the four of us had downed the first boss and were clearing the trash to the second, I think he realised we really weren’t going to kick him. He went from being abusive to pleading with us, and by the time Boss 2 was down and that hadn’t worked either, he reverted to calling us “noobs”, “fags” and “dildos” again. Eventually he just went quiet and sat there at the entrance waiting for us to kill the last boss so he could collect his two Frost Badges and leave.

Except just before the last boss, when you’re mounted up on the platform ready to go? That’s when we kicked him.

You made me chuckle at work and I got funny looks… I love love letting idiots lie dead on the floor while they bitch for resses. Also helps when the tank is your good friend and the other person who can res realizes the idiot lying on the floor doesn’t deserve the effort.

(I’m pretty sure I messed up lay/lie up, but I can’t remember which is which for the life of me. Yes, grammar is srs bsns, just like lowbie dungeons.)

It was pretty funny since the Pally tried kicking Ana 3 times and me at least once when he realized I was not taunting stuff off him. I casually mentioned that that is what happens (no taunts and no heals) you try pulling without the tank. As part of his tirade he insisted I must not have played very long if I thought that because no one does that. Heh. Well I don’t care if no one else lets jerks die, my three tanks do and two healers do.

The annoying flip side of the ‘srs bzns’ is the people that insist on playing stupid at low levels and laugh at you when you tell them to stop taunting, or pet growling, or pulling. Low instances might not be ‘srs bzns’ but my kick button works the same.

With our two friends being out of town this weekend, my wife and I tried the LFG thingy.

First on our level 15 toons. I tried to tank all mobs on my bear (she DPS on her shaman) but given bears have so few tools at 15 and the melee shaman was wearing 5 pieces of heirloom and a shield, we agreed I would not taunt off him if he pulled. Easy run and it was nice for my wife to run this instance for the first time. One interesting tidbit is despite my wife and I were the only two toons not wearing any heirlooms, the group was very polite and chatty, and let me set the pace (comfortable but not go-go-go).

Second, the Scarlet Monastery on my elemental shaman (32) and her restoration druid (33). The paladin tank pulled two groups and the patrol after the first corridor and wife draws healing aggro. We wipe and the tank leaves after a few choice words about us not being able to down a simple 8 elite multi-pull. We chose to 4-man the instance; the wife switch to bear and she tanks the rest of the instance while I heal. She did not do a great job holding aggro – first time she tanks on a bear and she is not specced for it – but everyone was fine with her tanking as she pulled correctly and did not allow a mob to munch on our only clothie.

Third was Scarlet Library on my elemental shaman (33) and her druid (34). The paladin tank was terrible but he left in a rage when everybody responded to his “I will kick you if you continue pulling” directled at the warrior with “lol, the warrior is not pulling them off you, he is saving our bacon when you lose them”. We chatted a little and then decided to continue with four only, with the wariior tanking. It’s amazing how instances go well if you pull correctly, even if you are not specced for the role and you are missing one or two party members. I think we made a convert this day.

It was also the first time I topped the DPS meters (139 DPS at 33) after 5+ years and 2000+ dungeons. Yeah me!

Last was The Nexus on her frost mage and my beast mastery hunter, both 72. The paladin tank had about 9.8k health unbuffed but kept wanting to pull multiple groups. After two wipes and his perseverance in blaming the healer for the wipes (he died in < 3 seconds when he pulled 7 despite receiving 1 heal), we vote-kicked him for incompetence and stubborn stupidity. We continued with 4 and the DK did a decent job tanking the rest of the instance with my bear off-tanking, and wife and I doing a little bit of everything at times.

Wife beat me on the meters, as usual. I was pleased how the holy paladin positioned himself as he made it very easy for us to prevent mobs from ever reaching him whenever he drew aggro. It was a good fun run and we thanked the DK for being such a good sport.

Nice summary of stuff. Those runs were a gold mine of blogging.
Nothing like having a weak/bad tank to ruin a whole run. A good tank can make up for a bad healer, somewhat, but there are few ways to save from a bad tank short of someone else tanking.

That run with your wife tanking is a great example of why knowledge of pulling and basic tanking can make up for lack in just about every area of tanking skill (not saying she is lacking there). If the tank is sane and the group is understanding and does their job that is all you need to make the run work. That could be a whole post.

I have done a lot of runs in low tanks in the last couple months but very rarely do I multi pull. I need to do a whole post on how to do multi pulls right, with a huge subsection explain when NOT to do it. I have found that it is hard, very hard, as a tank at low levels to do them. They tool bucket is just so tiny and everyone AOEs so much.

Another good post I might have to do is talking about confidence. Confidence is a huge asset to a tank… BUT over-confidence is a deadly sin for a tank. A very very deadly sin.

Another post topic your comment reminded me of is blame assignment. I have an idea percolating to do a blog post on how to figure out what went wrong after a wipe. I am not sure what I can say on the subject yet though… it is usually complicated. I do want to cover it sometime though.

An excellent tip for nub Bear tanks at 15 is the Glyph of Maul, you need to be 15 to use your first Glyph but it allows your Maul to hit two targets instead of one, free threat at low levels is not to be sniffed at, and it’s WAY better two-target threat than Swipe.

Great advice. I figured that one out much much later (see tanking 101: hitting the wall). Getting the similar glyph on my warrior mush sooner (as well as macroing it up) made me a far more uber tank far sooner on my warrior than I ever was leveling my bear.

Also, you don’t have to chose between swipe and maul for multi target agro. Maul goes off on the next swing. So you write this macro and spam it. If you don’t pick a image it will defaut to the swipe picture. I have a whole bar set up where everything is macroed to also throw maul. This works great after about level 50 or so when rage starts to not be an issue.

I hope to see more tales of tanks refusing to taunt and healers refusing to heal idiots. It is pretty disheartening to read about this happening at higher levels and people insisting that they’ve never run into anyone who wouldn’t tank, heal or rez no matter what stupid stunt they pulled. My husband and I catch so much of it when leveling our low 20’s horde-side toons and our hope has been that by the time we reached 50-70’s we would see less and less dickish behavior. I think it will only happen with repeated refusals from tanks and healers to not stand for dps abuse, so keep fighting the good fight!

It really helps when you take someone with you. You know you’ve got one vote on your side already, and especially when you’re the healer and tank pair you’ve got all the power.

Things will not get better unless we the players take a stand. It is a social issue and has social-pressure answers. I think we need to start a “one idiotic action, one warning, then kick” system. With no-heals for people you can’t kick and hope their repair bill helps.